FOiS — The Behavior Behind the Numbers: the complete operating system for a modern dealership service department, from the service drive to the director's chair.
Every dealership chases the same numbers: effective labor rate, hours per repair order, retention, CSI, gross. Most managers stare straight at those numbers and try to force them to move. They rarely do. This book is built on one hard-won truth — the number is only a shadow. Change the behavior beneath it, and the number takes care of itself.
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Leadership is where every number in your service department is won or lost — long before it shows up on a report.
A service department takes on the character of the person who runs it, so Volume One starts there: the honest question of who you are as a leader and what your store actually stands for. From that foundation it builds coaching for accountability and profit — not the annual pep talk, but the daily, repeatable habit of developing people — and shows why the person standing on the drive is the highest-return investment a dealer can make.
From there it pours the foundations most departments never do: onboarding that actually sticks, clear roles and standards, and a career path that gives your best people somewhere to go. When every seat is named and every number is owned, a car never stalls on the lot because moving it was "nobody's job."
The payoff is a team that performs when you are not watching. Volume One is about building that team on purpose, so the standard lives in your people — not just in your head.
Selling in the service lane is not pressure — it is honesty, language, and a process the customer can trust.
Volume Two rebuilds the customer conversation from the greeting to the close. It teaches advisors to present a fact instead of defending an opinion, beginning with the multi-point inspection and the Pass/Fail revolution that ends the guesswork and lets a customer see exactly where their vehicle stands.
From there it covers marketing through the maintenance menu, the additional services most stores leave on the table, and a pricing strategy built on purpose instead of this month's special. Every piece ties back to a single idea: earn the sale by telling the truth, and the customer comes back.
The result is a drive where customers buy because they trust you, advisors sell without feeling like salespeople, and the effective labor rate climbs instead of bleeds. Volume Two is the language and behavior that turn a service visit into a relationship.
Process is the daily discipline that turns a good month into a good year — and a shadow into a real number.
Volume Three is the operating manual. It runs from reception and operation codes to the critical benchmarks that finally tell you the truth about your business — the numbers you can read, and the ones you have been guessing at.
It goes deep on technician production, managerial accounting and financial controls, the business development center, mobile service and pick-up/delivery, and the parts department that quietly speeds up or slows down the whole shop. It closes with the handful of profit-generating processes that tie every discipline in the book together.
Finally, it hands you a diagnostic you can run on your own store on any day you are willing to look honestly — a mirror that points straight to the chapter that fixes each red box. Volume Three is how you stop inheriting a service department and start transforming one.
It is the complete operating model Steven E. Shaw built over a career in dealership service, written as the field manual he wished someone had handed him on his first day as a manager: how to lead people, build process, price with intention, and read a service department like a book.
The idea at its center is simple and hard-won. Every number in the service department is a shadow of a behavior. Chase the number and it slips away; change the behavior beneath it and the number comes true on its own. That is the whole thesis, and it is the reason the book exists.
Unlike a seminar workbook or a collection of sales tricks, FOiS is organized the way a real service department runs — leadership, sales approach, and process, in that order — so each volume builds on the one before it. Chapters end in checklists and word tracks you can hand straight to an advisor or manager, which makes the book as useful on a Monday morning meeting as it is on a first read.
Dealers who have worked with Steven E. Shaw's live training will recognize the voice immediately: direct, practical, and built around the multi-point inspection and Pass/Fail approach that made his in-store coaching effective in the first place. FOiS puts that same fixed operations training system on the shelf, so it is never more than an arm's length away from the drive.
Written for service directors, fixed operations managers, and service advisors alike, FOiS is a dealership service department training book that treats leadership, sales, and process as one connected system rather than three separate problems. It replaces guesswork with a repeatable operating model — the same one Steven E. Shaw has used to train thousands of dealership teams — so results stop depending on which advisor happens to be on the drive that day. Whether you run a single store or oversee fixed operations across a dealer group, FOiS gives you a common language for coaching your team, pricing with intention, and reading your service department's numbers for what they really are: a scoreboard for behavior.
The back of the book is a toolkit you will reach for again and again: a plain-English glossary of the terms and numbers that run the business, a formula quick-reference, a library of word tracks for the conversations that win or lose the sale, and a diagnostic you can run on your own store.
Throughout the book you are guided by FOiS — the Fixed Operations Intelligence System — a collaborator whose only job is to make what works measurable and hand it back to you in plain language. FOiS is the voice of the book, and the reason it reads like a mentor rather than a manual.
Steven E. Shaw is a professional speaker, trainer, and dealership expert — and a pioneer in fixed operations. He holds a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership with an emphasis on human behavior, and across a career spanning three decades he has trained thousands of dealerships and fixed-operations professionals. Dealers call him the Fixed Operations Training JEDI.
He is the founder of Shaw Dealer Training Group and Shaw University, and the author of Master of the Waiting Room, The Art of Pass-Fail, and FOiS — The Behavior Behind the Numbers.
Shaw and his team do not send a video and leave. They stand on the drive and coach advisors, technicians, and managers one-on-one, building a custom training system a store can run on long after the visit ends. His work is grounded in the study of human behavior and delivered in the plain, blunt language of the service lane.
Founder, Shaw Dealer Training Group & Shaw University
Get FOiS — The Behavior Behind the Numbers, or start with a sample chapter to see the operating system for yourself.
FOiS was written for the people who carry a dealership's fixed operations numbers on their shoulders every day — service directors, fixed operations managers, and the advisors and technicians who work the drive. If that describes your seat, this book was built for you.
Pre-order today to lock in launch pricing and be first to receive your copy, or reach out to Shaw Dealer Training Group to bring Steven E. Shaw's in-store fixed operations training to your dealership alongside it.